The role of the medicinal chemist in modern drug discovery continues to evolve. Whilst the design and synthesis of quality development candidates to tackle society’s unmet clinical needs remains at the core of the role of the medicinal chemist, it has expanded to address the challenges of candidate attrition; new target classes; and the processing of larger datasets, all of which are underpinned by the use of chemistry to harness the power of biology in novel therapeutics.

Attention has turned in recent years to developing innovative ways to identify lead matter for drug discovery programmes and to enrich projects at the hit to lead phase. In addition, new and often unfamiliar gene families demand more innovative ways to validate drug targets and confirm their tractability for a chemistry-driven project. Our understanding of how to deliver large molecules efficiently and safely into specific compartments is growing, and with the advent of high performance computing our knowledge of how ligands interact with their protein partners has grown to the extent that these interactions can be modelled effectively. We are beginning to see the application of an exciting ability to subvert biology to create vast screening libraries of compounds to identify hit matter against an ever-expanding cohort of targets. Researchers are now able to modulate the properties of traditionally difficult peptide chemical space through targeted modifications and conjugations to the extent where this chemical matter offers a viable starting point for drug discovery programmes. We are also now seeing a more detailed interrogation of the data, generated over many decades, across the scientific community to enable proposition of new targets, modulation strategies and directions for chemistry projects. These are exciting times for the medicinal chemistry community.

This one day symposium will highlight some of the new technologies and research trends at the forefront of drug discovery today through an expert speaker cohort of scientists from Pharma, biotech and academia from across Europe.

Our speakers will discuss the design and use of DNA-encoded libraries to identify new lead material across a wide range of target space. They will discuss recent advances in peptide drug discovery and discuss means to modulate proteins in therapeutically beneficial ways beyond traditional small molecules, and also how to deliver large molecules. We will see the use of computational methods to inform and guide chemistry programmes, and the use of chemical tools to interrogate signalling pathways.

This meeting will be of interest to students and practicing professionals with an interest in drug discovery and the application of new methods and technologies to the enablement of drug discovery. More information and registration details are available on the society website: visit the SMR (www.smr.org.uk) website for more information.